Week 5

This is the first week of Chandler Park’s Summer Program and I must say that working with kids is hard work. They are all so fun and have different personalities so that is the only hard part about working the program. One negative thing that I would have to mention is that it feels like I’m watching more kids than I should be. The youth workers are supposed to be in charge of watching over the kids in the program, but it feels like we are watching over both the youth workers and the children in the summer program. I understand that the youth workers are also young so they may also want to have fun without any responsibilities which is why I don’t think that they should be watching over the kids in the program and that they would have a better experience being a youth worker elsewhere. However, this doesn’t apply to all of the youth workers because I know a couple of them do very well with watching over the kids. This first week of the program has shown me what it’s like to work in a nonprofit. Everything is feeling very stressful right now because it feels like there isn’t enough of us while there are a lot of things to do. On the other hand, it’s very rewarding for me to know that the kids in the program are comfortable enough to talk to me when they have an issue with something or to express their excitement of what they do during the program. Especially on days that aren’t going well for me, it makes me happy when they give me a smile or hug and to see them having fun.